62 GENERAL TKINCIPLES. 



cessary to be known. The nurseryman buys of the seeds 

 man j ust us he received them ; this is the way that the coun- 

 try has been filled with miserable, diseased, and unsightly 

 trees, and who is in the fault ? " "Why," most people would 

 say, the " nurserymen, of course. They ought to be more 

 careful in selecting their seeds, so that they might be cer- 

 tain of having sound and healthy stocks. They ought to 

 select the fruits, from which to obtain their seeds, while on 

 the tree, and see that the trees are not in an incipient, or, 

 perhaps, an advanced state of decay, but in full health and 

 vigor, possessing such characters, as to habit, growth, and 

 hardiness, as are desirable in the best quality of nursery 

 stock." Yery true, it must be admitted. This is precisely 

 the course that nurserymen ought to pursue. It is the 

 course followed in the great orchard districts of France, and 

 that ought to be adopted everywhere. But we must have 

 cheap, easy, and labor-saving modes of doing things now- 

 a-days ; as well the raising of trees as everything else. 

 Suppose a nurseryman could be found who would go about 

 the culture of trees after some such system as we have indi- 

 cated, it must be very clear that he could not sell his trees 

 as cheap as another, who followed the present almost uni- 

 versal hap-hazard course, and if he could not do this, the 

 probability is he would be compelled to keep them ; foi 

 purchasers of trees, as a general thing, make no such discri- 

 minations. It happened one season that more than the 

 usual quantities of seedling, unworked, peach trees were 

 brought into the streets of Rochester for sale ; they were 

 as miserable, in all respects, as trees could be ; yet they 

 were sold by the thousand, at from 4 to 8 cents apiece, 

 and scarcely one of them ever grew, for they were killed 

 by exposure, fortunately. At that very time there were 

 large stocks in the nurseries, about town, of good worked 

 trees of the best varieties, offered at one shilling each. 

 This instance is quoted simply to show who are to blame 



